The Mark Of Cain 01

It was well known that the law and order of Westland City was very terrible.

Just three quarters into 2016, the crime rate in Westland City had increased rather than decreased, maintaining an outstanding average of ten shootings per day; in August alone, ninety people were killed. And before the summer was over, there had been more than five hundred cases of murders in the city.

Anyone in Westland City who dealt with homicide on a regular basis has long been accustomed to the three-shift system, causing them to be on standby day and night. Being called up in the middle of the night to rush to the crime scene is simply an integral part of their tedious daily lives. This can be used to explain why, when Albarino Bacchus exited his Chevrolet with the smell of cologne, he treated this as a usual scene of investigation.

It was after 3:00 a.m.. A police cordon was drawn outside a desolate, dark grove of trees, the sparse branches of which were reflected in various eerie colors by the flashing lights of the police car. Officer Bart Hardy of the Westland Police Department was guarding the tape like a wolfdog with his fur standing up on his head: his appearance was enough to show that things were very unusual.

When Officer Hardy looked up, he saw the most experienced and most skilled forensic pathologist in the Forensic Bureau walking towards the crime scene with a big wide smile on his face, carrying a forensic pathology toolbox in his hand. Behind him was a red sports car that didn't fit in with the phrase "crime scene". Albarino's hair was a mess; it looked like it had been repeatedly messed up by someone's fingers, and even his belt buckle looked like it had been hastily fastened.

Hardy had already waited for him for some time, while a group of scientists in the Crime Science Investigation team were busy as bees inside the crime scene. Before they finished taking photos and fixing the evidence in place, there was no need to be so urgent for the forensic pathologist to enter the scene. Once Albarino came closer, Hardy could smell the odor of aftershave, cologne and alcohol mixed together, which made the officer frown: "You haven't been drinking, have you, Al?"

"What? Absolutely not." The young forensic pathologist's eyes widened somewhat exaggeratedly, as if to illustrate that he was really a man with professional integrity, "But you did interrupt my wonderful evening with two beautiful girls: a very, very wonderful evening."

That was a half-truth: Albarino did have a wonderful evening, but he didn't flirt with the girls, and watched them from a distance instead: only when you're out of the scene can you get a general idea of the whole picture. He spent several hours watching the girls with heavy makeup. He didn't like the smell of cosmetics and perfume, but he believed they would be more beautiful if their skin were shredded off.

Hardy, of course, did not know what was on his mind, but raised an eyebrow: apparently, the dutiful officer did not want to know whom Albarino spent the night with. In his mind, only this unreliable person with work early in the morning the next day could flirt with girls this obsessively and crazily [1]. Yet Albarino certainly did not hear his unspoken criticism, as people have already learned the unchanging mindset of the forensic pathologist.

[1] 玩物喪志: lit. trifling destroys the will (idiom), meaning obsessed and addicted with something trivial

Albarino peered behind Hardy curiously, his tone still heartlessly pleasant: "Can I enter?"

... Hardy spent two seconds thinking if it was a hidden dirty joke. He hoped it wasn't.

"Let's wait for people from CSI to come out first. The crime scene is quite complicated, so don't go inside and mess around before they finish taking photos." Hardy automatically ignored the nagging thought in his mind, "And we still have to wait for Olga to arrive."

"Olga?" Albarino could not help but ask. Olga Molozer was a criminal psychology professor at Westland State University, a consultant for the WLPD. For usual cases, there was no need for her help. "You called her here too?"

Apparently things might be more serious than Albarino thought. Before Hardy called him to get to the scene of the crime without mentioning any detail, he thought it was just an ordinary murder case – of course, "ordinary" murder meant extremely bloody and brutal cases. This was the life of the chief forensic pathologist.

Now, the police officer with big dark circles under his eyes sighed tiredly and said simply, in that tone of voice that everyone understood: "The Westland Pianist."

– Albarino understood.

The "Westland Pianist" was a serial killer. To be more precise, there were a total of 2 serial killers who had been operating in Westland City but have never been caught. One of them was the Pianist Hardy mentioned, and the other was the "Sunday Gardener" who liked to put flowers into dead bodies.

Due to the brutal ways of committing the crime, and all his victims were criminals, the media loved this Pianist. From their provocative way of saying it, he was "the best serial killer in Westland City, second to none".

Of course, from Albarino 's personal point of view: he thought that the Pianist was at best ranked second. Some killers liked to torture people alive, and some liked to dismember corpses, but you can't determine that the killer who tortured people alive was more psychotic than the one who dismembered the dead, right?

Hardy obviously could not know that there was a secret serial killer ranking in Albarino's mind. The officer's face was full of worry, hair seemingly whitening every second because of these damn serial killers. He told Albarino: "I worked overtime late into the wee hours at the department today. Before I left work, I found out that the Pianist had mixed his own letter into my mail."

Like this, the "Westland Pianist" was a psychopath who liked to send a letter to the police station after his crime, informing them of the location where it was committed. This was a kind of blind, inflated self-confidence, but even so, this person had never been caught.

Albarino could easily imagine how it happened: their respected police officer leapt from his desk chair after receiving the pretentious handwritten letter, cursing and calling to inform everyone.

The Westland Pianist was known for sending letters to the police department. They had received a number of letters from copycats claiming to be admirers of the serial killer since he started operating, but because the Pianist's handwriting was never made available to the public, Hardy must have recognized his distinctive script immediately.

Each of the Pianist's letters was reliable and they could definitely find the body at the location he indicated. In this regard, the police officers might as well have had an ironic trust in the serial killer. Albarino looked into the dark night between the trees, occasionally seeing the blue protective clothing of the trace inspectors and the flickering light pillars from the flashlights.

"Did you find anything?" Albarino asked as he surveyed the darkness with interest.

"Same old story. There's a bunch of people at the department right now trying to figure out how he sent that letter, although I suspect there's not a big chance of finding out." Hardy replied wearily. The Pianist committed three to four crimes a year, and this scenario had played out year after year since Albarino had started working. Not once had they been able to find out the address where the letter was actually sent anyway. "And that corpse inside ... is somewhat disfigured beyond recognition. The lab is comparing DNA and we will soon know who he is."

That was a really sweet and thoughtful point about the Pianist: every single one of his victims had a criminal record, so it's easy to identify the victim. Unlike the Sunday Gardener, another famous psychopathic serial killer in Westland City, where several of the Gardener's victims have not been identified to date.

Thinking about this, the corner of Albarino 's mouth formed a mocking sneer:

Seriously, what's the point of that? Is it better to kill a guilty person than an innocent one? Come on, you're already a psychopathic killer! Choosing to kill criminals who didn't get the punishment they deserve is just a way to feel superior above law and law enforcement, just to see yourself as an omniscient and omnipotent punisher. Albarino could probably understand where this behavior was coming from, but he just thought it was senseless arrogance.

Officer Hardy didn't see that cold smile at the corner of his mouth. The pleasantries were over – because with the noise of another car driving down from the shoulder of the main road, and with the sound of those wheels crushing over the decaying dirt and leaves, Olga Molozer, the police department's consultant, arrived.

As far as Albarino knew, Hardy had never dealt with the FBI due to some very complicated reasons, although the two serial killers in Westland City had apparently been so bad that the police department could have invited the FBI in even if it wasn't an interstate case. Anyway, the Westland Police Department didn't bother to ask the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Division for criminal profiling, but they did have Olga.

Olga Molozer, who became a consultant for the police department about three years ago, used to be part of the Behavioral Analysis Department, but then quit her job at the FBI for some reason and came to teach at Westland State University. She was an extraordinarily hot, good-looking brunette who even looked a bit like Alicia Vikander from certain angles.

Hardy had waited too long to have patience. When Olga just got out of the car, legs crossing through the uneven soft pile of leaves, Hardy had already pulled up the police tape, signaling them to hurry up and get underneath. Olga jogged towards them, not forgetting to flash a smile at Albarino: "Hi Al, how many hours of sleep did you get this night?"

No one wanted to point out that Olga seemed to have a silk nightgown under her trench coat, probably being forced awake by Hardy's call. Albarino offered her a smile, "I didn't sleep. I had a very eventful evening planned."

Hardy, the only one who had actually worked late into the night grunted from his nose as he led them through the woods. They could already see the CSIs who were busy. Hardy clearly had no intention of continuing their pleasantries, instead saying directly, "These woods are an orchard of a nearby farm, and while these trees didn't grow so well, they are indeed fruit trees."

Albarino looked closely at the leaves. There was no fruit on the trees, which had probably been picked, but he still recognized them: "These are apple trees?"

Hardy grunted from his nose, and they knew the next second why Hardy had stressed that this was an orchard: they were quickly approaching the body. There were shiny yellow physical evidence markers all over the floor, although it was almost impossible for the CSI to extract valuable blood or footprints from this crime scene given what they knew about the Pianist, who had always been meticulously careful.

Surrounded by the pile of labels of evidence as if it were sacrifices for worship, was none other than Pianist's latest creation.

The body, with limbs spread in a Christian cross, was held to the ground by a tall wooden stake. It was impossible to determine whether the man was tied to the stake or skewered like a grasshopper; the dried blood soaked the entire lower half of his body anyway. He wore a straw hat on his head, and his lips were cut open with a knife into a big smile and sewn back together with rough stitches one by one, looking like a scarecrow.

– or rather, instead of a body, it was a scarecrow.

"My God," Olga murmured in awe, "amazing."

No one reminded her that she was talking like a sociopath right now.

Albarino looked at the "scarecrow" and frowned slightly: the victim's figure looked familiar, but given that his face was covered in blood, he couldn't recall where he'd seen it before.

The head of the crime scene investigation team, Bates Schwandner, was standing under the scarecrow, wearing latex gloves and a camera used to set the evidence around his neck. He heard their footsteps and turned his head towards Albarino : "We're done with the evidence. You can put down the body."

Bates was not surprised to see them at the scene; after all, they were always the ones involved in such cases. In the early years of Officer Hardy's confidence in catching the psychopathic killers who roamed the city, it was the "best of the best" from all departments that were involved in the investigation – that was the few of them. Today, these old friends met again in a familiar setting, and if Albarino guessed correctly, it would still be a day without any results.

Officer Hardy's mouth was taut as he directed the officers to put the body down. Albarino put on gloves, and came forward: the body would be transported to the Forensic Bureau to be further autospied, but the state of the body needed to be examined before that. Investigating at the scene is usually the work of forensic field investigators, but the Pianist's case is quite nasty, so there was a need for a licensed forensic pathologist to be at the scene.

Albarino first removed the tattered straw hat from the victim's head. Olga crouched beside them and stared at the hat with interest, probably understanding the killer's sense of perverse humor from it. After the dead man's face was exposed, the scene looked a bit more grisly: in addition to the sewn smiley face, two large buttons were nailed into the "scarecrow"'s eyes.

Albarino looked at that gruesome face, exclaiming with hisses from his throat. As usual, Bates did not say a word. He cold-facedly put the scale ruler on the cheek of the dead, and raised the camera to take pictures of the face.

Albarino waited for him to finish before examining the face of the deceased, focusing on the edges of the wounds and stitches. His fingers brushed over the rough stitches, which were tightly strung around the edges of the swollen wound. He suspected that the Westland Pianist could actually do needlework beautifully, but he had sewn the human face so roughly just to mimic the fuzzy face of a scarecrow, for his twisted humor.

"There's vital reaction at the edge of the wound," Albarino noted, "The victim was still alive when the killer cut his face open and sewed it back on with thread. He was apparently still alive when the buttons were sewn onto his eyelids."

"Quite like the Pianist who prefers to torture his victims alive. Rather than setting up the scene after death, most of the work of decorating the victim is usually done while the victim is still alive." Olga commented.

"I'm pretty sure the killer is the Pianist, Olga." Officer Hardy said coldly from behind them, "I would never mistake his handwriting."

"We believe you, Bart." Olga sweetly coaxed him, trying to soothe his anxiety, "but the case itself must still follow the official procedures."

Although Olga was right, Albarino was also very sure that the case before him was definitely the Pianist; he quickly finished examining the blood-soaked face of the victim. It was not convenient to conduct the examination outside. When he returned to the Forensic Bureau, he would have to wash the blood off the victim's face, then they could see clearly what he looked like.

"And we can see that the killer stitches from right to left. Look at the order of the stitches." Albarino nudged one of the threads with tweezers in his hand, "The Pianist is left-handed, isn't he?"

The CSI had previously done handwriting analysis on the Pianist's letters to the police, and could determine that from the strength of the writing, a left-handed man wrote those letters. Past cases from the body of the knife marks could also prove this. Undoubtedly, the Pianist was left-handed.

Hardy angrily muttered behind them; things were obviously not out of his expectations. Albarino and Bates continued to examine the body. If necessary, when Albarino returned to the Forensic Bureau, Bates would also attend the autopsy, and possibly strip the corpse of his clothing back to the CSI lab for forensic tests. For many years, they hoped that the Westland Pianist would be careless enough to leave extractable fingerprints and DNA on the deceased's clothes, but unfortunately the Pianist disappointed them every time.

The victim's body was a bit more shocking: for he was not tied to the stake, but was pierced through it. The sharpened stake went through his back and the tip protruded out of his chest; whoever did that must have been very strong. Albarino carefully picked apart the clothes on the chest of the deceased; there was a large amount of bleeding from where the stake protruded from his chest.

And after loosening his collar, a thin, red, swollen strangulation mark can bee seen on the neck of the deceased.

"He was still alive when the killer penetrated him with this. My tentative guess is that the heavy bleeding from being stabbed thoroughly by wood almost killed him." Albarino tsk-ed several times before speaking. That wasn't too respectful, was it. "However, in fact, the cause of his death was probably mechanical asphyxiation: look at the strangulation marks on his neck. The subcutaneous bleeding indicates that he was still alive when the killer strangled him with something – of course, even if the killer hadn't strangled him, he would have died of hemorrhagic shock a few minutes later. It's just a question of when."

"The Pianist's typical modus operandi." Olga commented, propping her chin up. She looked quite pleased with herself. "Strangulation is actually unnecessary for the entire murder process, but obviously has an important symbolic meaning for the killer: no matter how violent he is with the victim, eventually the victim must die of asphyxiation."

Albarino glanced at Olga. Both of them had a more relaxed attitude; they really should be self-reflecting. He coughed and got serious: "He's a sadist."

"There are some people who think that he chose criminals as his victims out of an angry urge for revenge. I actually don't think so; we could write a thesis based on that." Olga shrugged, shifting her weight because her legs were numb, and squirmed around with difficulty on the ground. "But, in any case, yes: he derives immoral pleasure from abusing and suffocating the dead. It's that pursuit of pleasure that turns him into a serial killer."

He had no taste. Albarino could not help but comment in his mind.

It was also at this time that Officer Hardy's cell phone rang again. He stood behind them for a few minutes answering the phone, a call that consisted of a whole lot of uh-huhs and brief instructions for the officers. Then, Officer Hardy put the phone down with gritted teeth and said to them, "It's confirmed; that's him."

"Was the identity of the victim found?" Bates was the first to speak up. If it turned out that the deceased was another criminal, it was basically confirmed that this was the work of the Westland Pianist.

"Yes." Officer Hardy stared at the blurred face of the dead, made of stitches and buttons, and said, "This man is the older brother of one of the Norman Brothers, Richard Norman – that's the 'Norman Brothers'. "

Olga "Ah"ed, apparently recalling something: "The Norman Brothers. The mob from the east end of Westland?"

And when Albarino heard that name, he also froze for a moment.

He finally knew why the victim looked so familiar – the pile of clotted blood, messy buttons and stitches on the man's face had completely ruined it. The loosely patched scarecrow costume also changed his figure, and made Albarino not recognize him at once.

Yet in reality, he had been following this Richard Norman for a long time: he'd spent three months stalking him in between his busy forensic work, incorporating the man's body into his new work in his mind, so that this guy, who contributed nothing to human society (except perhaps for drug addicts), could at least be part of an artistic creation. If it weren't for the hellish amounts of shootings lately, Albarino would have done so two weeks ago.

He turned once again to the smiling scarecrow face on the body: now he was no longer a dead body in Albarino's eyes, no longer just a piece of rotting flesh. Now, in Albarino 's eyes – or rather, in the eyes of the notorious psychopathic serial killer, the "Sunday Gardener" – it was as if someone forcefully removed a large piece of white paint from his palette; the deepest pain of every artist.

Three months of scouting and the mountain of drafts had been ruined. All the materials he had needed and bought were still piled up in the shed behind his wooden house, collecting dust.

In this long moment, between laughter and tears [2], Albarino suddenly thought: Was this considered plagiarism or not?

[2] 啼笑皆非: not knowing whether to laugh or cry

Author's Notes:

1. The crime rate data of this non-existent, made-up city in the article is actually the real data of Chicago in 2016.

2. We can all see that the story is probably set in a fictional city in the United States, although not really specified the United States, but obviously written based on the US.

So here are some facts: the US CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), Forensics Bureau, BAU (FBI's behavioral Analysis Unit), and the police are independent departments from each other.

The FBI is the federal police and generally has no right to intervene in cases that do not involve interstate cases, although the state police may ask the FBI for help in mega-large cases. The FBI has not been involved in this case yet.

Hardy is a detective with the Westland Police Department. He is currently involved in a serial murder case that was extremely terrible, but there is no clear evidence that this is an interstate case.

Olga Molozer, who worked as a professor at Westland State University after leaving BAU, is currently a consultant for the Westland PD. She's obviously not an FBI anymore.

Albarino Bacchus is the chief forensic pathologist of the Westland Forensics Bureau (In American forensics, they are not police officers, it is just a kind of ordinary civil servant), and unlike your typical chief forensic pathologists, he loves to go out to investigate the scene. In addition, the U.S. forensic pathologists and Chinese forensic pathologists are not the same ... U.S. forensics salary is quite high.

3. Alicia Vikander: actress, the lead actress in "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.".

4. Vital reaction:

The vital reaction is the response of the living organism to various pathogenic factors and traumas, including morphological changes and functional changes. After the body is subjected to violence, a series of vital reactions can occur in the injured part and the whole body, which can be seen by the naked eye, light microscopes or other laboratory examination methods. Among what the naked eye could view, changes include haemorrhage, tissue contraction, swelling, scab formation, wound infection, foreign body movement, etc.; histological changes include: RBC accumulation in sub-capsular lymphatic sinuses of local nodes, thrombosis, embolism, inflammation, trauma (wound) healing, etc.

One of the tasks for forensic pathology is to look for these vital reactions in order to infer the time elapsed from the start of the violence to death.